http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
HERE'S a question: If Andrea Yates, the confessed murderess of her own five children,
is actually a "victim" of postpartum depression and is deserving of our compassion (as Katie
Couric, Rosie O'Donnell, and the National Organization for Women would have us believe), then
why not equal compassion for Nikolay Soltys who killed six members of his own family including
his pregnant wife? Isn't he also a "victim" of some sort of depression or some other such
mental disorder? What's the difference? Yates is a woman. That's the difference.

Well, there I go again, picking on the feminists. Actually, I'm for complete equality
in these two horrendous cases. Execute them both. Equal death penalties for equal murderers.
Put them out of their misery and eradicate them from the face of the earth. I don't want these
people to live. I don't want them to go to prison and be able to enjoy television and read
books and smell flowers and taste food for years and years to come. I don't want them to go to
a mental institution to "get well." I don't want them to feel remorse. I want them to feel
dead.

Cold-hearted am I? No compassion? Well, let me tell you, I feel a lot of compassion
for the innocent people who were murdered by these monsters. I want to cry when I think of the
children who were chased down, caught and dragged kicking and screaming to that bathtub where
their own mother held their heads down and drowned them. My chest gets heavy and I choke up
when I think of the 3-year boy bludgeoned to death by his own father. And the others he
murdered. No, I am not without compassion -- compassion for the babies that never had a
chance.

Where does this "victimization" business stop? At what point can society expect
someone to take responsibility for his or her own actions? How about when you murder
needlessly, wantonly and without hesitation. Did these two know right from wrong? It's a fact
that Andrea Yates called the police immediately after she committed her murders. And Nikolay
Soltys ran away and did everything he could to evade authorities. Reporting yourself to the
cops and/or running away from them tells me that person knew damn well that he/she did
something wrong.

So let us have compassion for the five murdered children of Andrea Yates -- namely
2-year old Luke, 3-year old Paul, 5-year old John, 7-year old Noah and 6-month old Mary. And
let us have compassion for Solty's six murder victims -- his 3-year old son Sergey, his
pregnant wife, Lubyov, and his aunt, uncle and two young cousins.

These eleven are the people who really deserve equal rights under the law. And equal
rights mean equal and swift punishment of their murderers -- whether they're male or female.
But don't expect Katie Couric, Rosie O'Donnell, the ACLU, or the National Organization for
Women to worry too much about that. They're much too busy worrying about a woman's right to
choose. Never mind that these eleven innocents never got the right to choose to
live.

JWR contributor Greg Crosby, former creative head for Walt Disney publications, has written thousands of comics, hundreds of children's books, dozens of essays, and a
letter to his congressman. You may contact him by clicking here.